July 2006

Sunday, 30 July 2006

a bride about to wear the same style of dress as i wore in my wedding asked how i bustled my dress. i'm just getting a chance to document that for her.

first, the dress unbustled:

this is called, i'm told, a sweep train. there's not much to it--it's not very long, and very easy and comfortable to walk around in. the only real need for bustling is to keep it from getting stepped on on a crowded dance floor and make it safer when dancing with one's new husband, especially when he turns you :)

i wouldn't recommend this bustle for every dress. i've seen more elegant bustles without external hardware. but those bustles sometimes break :( this bustle held up beautifully all night and worked well with this dress, so...adapt as you see fit!

so the first step is to determine where the top of the bustle should be. there's no magic here. it's going to depend on where this looks best on you, depending on your height, the volume of the dress, the fabric, the hemline, the height of the shoes you'll be wearing for the ceremony and reception, and the placement of the loops in the next step. you'll adjust these, probably, as you go through this process, so let yourself play with these a bit. with this dress, it was easy--we just used the peak where the pleat in back joined. you can see that point plainly in both photos--it's the top of the triangle in the left photo or the little bump (not the big bump of my butt, but the smaller one below it) in the right one.

the second step is to decide where you want the points to join the bustle peak will be. on this bustle, we had three points (hence, a three-point bustle) that we wanted to come up to join the peak. basically, you'll figure out how much you need to shorten the hemline in back, make your center point drop down about twice that much beneath that peak, and try fiddling with raising and lowering the peak and drop until the flow looks right on you.

when you've decided where you want everything, you're ready to start attaching things. first, the hooks at the peak (we used three). you could use buttons instead--fabric-covered or something funkier--and if i'd known then what i know now, i might have asked for that. but we just used basic bra-style hooks in white plastic (the dress is white poly satin). second, the loops at the points to be joined.

that's it for the sewing. then, at the reception, all that's needed is for some helpful person to fasten the loops to each of the hooks as appropriate--center to center, and then inward out--and then sort of straighten out the folds and pleats. one of the things that was really important to me was to have a simple bustle, because our ceremony and reception were in adjoining rooms and i wasn't going to a separate place between the two events--everyone would be mingling and i would be in the midst of it. my dear friend annie bustled me while i sipped a ginger ale and smartboy talked to me off in a corner of our reception room while our guests made their way in. nobody seemed to notice.

once bustled, the dress hemline was completely flat. i wish the whole hemline, even the front, had been a bit longer, but it really was an incredibly comfortable, easy-to-wear dress all night long. i didn't feel the need to tug at it or adjust it at all, from the time i put it on at 4pm until the time i removed it more than eight hours later. i hear a lot of brides complain about their dresses sagging, twisting, being heavy, all sorts of things. the best part is that, because this was a bridesmaid dress, it cost me $300, including alterations. i love that part.

the other thing i loved about this dress, and this bustle, was its staying power. i was moving all night--aside from a brief seating at dinner and a brief seat with friends, i was either walking or dancing the whole evening. i've seen bustles break before, and it's not pretty. i boogied, i swayed, and the bustle outlasted me. i never worried a bit. and, of course, all of that beautiful ribbon detail remained effortlessly on display for everyone to see :)

no, we didn't go shopping. that's different. you know what i mean, y'all. don't pretend you don't. if you don't, you've just never been to costco. or you don't know anyone who has. or they're in the closet about it. or you're in denial.

when you go shopping, you pick up what you need. you think, "i need some listerine," so you go find yourself some listerine. maybe even the biggest bottle you can find, if you have space for a big old bottle of listerine. and maybe some impulse buys--maybe a candy bar at the checkout, or if you're in target, well, maybe you find some clothes or housewares or other whatnots.

but even target shopping is still shopping. it's fun. and even on my most extravagant, impulsive days at target, i've never left there spending more than a couple hundred bucks.

no, when you go costcoing, you're not shopping. you're preparing for life in a bomb shelter. you're buying supplies as though you are never going to be in another store, as though you seriously believe that by the time you get back into your car--between the time you check out your pallet o'goods and the time you pile into your overpacked vehicle, or between the time you putt your overpacked vehicle out of the teeming parking lot and schlep it back across town to your house--that every store will have somehow met with the great apocalypse. no, there will be no more stocking up on supplies hereafter. you will never again be able to find deodorant. not frozen foods. not socks. not dvds. not ptouch label makers. not furniture-mover slidey things. certainly not cereal. pshaw. NOBODY's going to be selling cereal, for god's sake. no, nobody will have any of those things, and so you'd better stock up.

that is the mental illness that takes over your psyche when you show the nice vested employee your id when you walk in the doors at costco, no matter what explicit agreements you and your partner may have had for three days before you went, and no matter how many times you repeated that agreement or reworded it to each other for those three days and in the car on the way over, even if one of those times was in the parking lot just moments before you actually walked in the doors and showed said id. doesn't matter. the mental illness takes over. i think it's something they pipe in the air. you turn into a costco zombie, and you are impelled to outfit your bomb shelter, whether you have one or not.

and so went yesterday. we spent hours and hundreds of dollars. i don't have any idea how we spend so much money on paper towels and cereal and frozen food, vitamins and listerine (it was a big bottle) and spaghetti sauce (three jars of paul newman's). but when we're stuck in our bomb shelter, we will have a boxed set of mel brooks dvds to watch, and we got them for $12 less than amazon sells them for. we may need that $12 when the apocalypse comes.

Thursday, 27 July 2006

some days, you have jumbled thoughts and too little time to put them into enough order to compose the post you want to, but you have to get them out of your head so they don't muddle the training you're about to spend the next eight hours in. so here are mine, and i just have to trust that my readers know me well enough by now to put them all together.
in my head: i'm exhausted. sleeping only on nights when i take migraine meds, turn on the room a/c, put an ice pack under my head, and enya on the only-occasionally-operable cd-clock-radio.
just published: report i edited about cost growth of weapon systems.
just read: joe and karen's blog. joe's brother is not a match. vince is leaving the state on friday. i am leading the charge now for the marrow donor drive. i feel bent with responsibility, but driven. help.
song that inexplicably choked me up on the drive in to work, as i cranked the stereo as loud as i could stand it:
now i'm not feeding off you
i will rearrange your scales
if i can--and i can--
march into the ocean, march into the sea

i had a hat, i put it down and it sunk
reached down,
yanked it up, slapped it on my head
all the people gather
fly to carry each his burden
we are young despite the years
we are concern
we are hope despite the times
all of the sudden, these days
happy throngs, take this joy wherever, wherever

i wish to meet each one of you
and you, me, you, if i can and i can
we have many things in common (name three!)

i had a hat and it sunk, reached down,
yanked it up, slapped it on my head
all the people gather
fly to carry each his burden
we are young despite the years
we are concern
we are hope despite the times
all of the sudden, these days
happy throngs, take this joy wherever, wherever you go

now I'm not feeding off you i will rearrange your scales
if i can and i can
i wish to eat each one of you and you, me, you

i had a hat and it sunk, reached down,
yanked it up, slapped it on my head
all the people gather
fly to carry each his burden
we are young despite the years
we are concern
we are hope despite the times
all of the sudden, these days
happy throngs, take this joy wherever, wherever you
carry each his burden
we are young despite the years
we are concern
we are hope despite the times
all of the sudden, these days
happy throngs, take this joy wherever, wherever you go!

Friday, 21 July 2006

i've been planning and blogging madly for the remodel. my original thoughts about a wile e. coyote-inspired blog (the house that wile e. built) were fun, but i decided that i didn't really want the remodel to be a joke in the eyes of any future buyer. and i couldn't do the graphic design justice in the little bit of time i'd allotted to the design of the blog--animation design is more important to me than it should be, i'm sure, but it is what it is. so i racked my brain for a couple of days, and where i always get my creative brainstorms--in the shower--it came to me. in my favorite movie, it's a wonderful life, there is a scene in which george bailey, having just remembered how wonderful his messed-up, imperfect life is, comes rushing home to find his precious family in his falling-apart house. he runs up the stairs, calling out to his wife mary and daughter zuzu and their other children, and his hand picks up a finial from the staircase railing--an act that, in the past, has driven him *mad* so many times in the past. but on this night, it reminds him that he's home, right where he wants to be. instead of getting angry like he usually does, he laughs, raises the finial to his lips, and kisses it before returning it to its rightful spot on the railing and continuing on his rush up the stairs to find his family.
i smiled, remembering this scene, and knowing that was the feeling i had about this house, this house that has made me so angry and frustrated so many times in the past two years but that is nonetheless our home--our first family home.
and i remembered the scene when mary and george were walking home from the prom, and she spotted the old house, throwing a rock through the window and making a wish on it. george promised to lasso the moon for her.
no wonder it's one of my favorite movies. so naturally, the house blog has now been named it's a wonderful house. hope you'll stop by and watch things evolve. :)

i just proofed this one, but it's still nice to have one i worked on finally out. most of the stuff i've been working on is stuck in a big fat pipeline of defense and other government clearances, author approvals, and ongoing long-term edits. so every little bit of "hey! a tangible result!" feels good these days. this latest: meeting funder compliance: a case study of challenges, time spent, and dollars invested. if you're in nonprofit management, might be interesting. available for free download at that url, or order a hard copy for a very reasonable price (as is true of most rand docs).

Thursday, 20 July 2006

well, i'm a screw-up. i'm in two secret pal exchanges--sp8 and what i thought was a pittsburgh secret pal exchange but is apparently just an "other" secret pal exchange. and apparently, since both of my secret pal spoilers just sign their cards and emails "your sp" or "your secret pal," i've been making bad assumptions about which things came from whom. so...i've gotten some wonderful things, like a big bag of sock yarn and needles for my birthday, and an itunes gift card, and a ball of nature cotton yarn...wonderful things. but i have no clue any more who gave me what. i can't even tell their emails apart, because they don't seem to come from consistent email addresses! don't get me wrong--i'm not complaining about being showered with anonymous wonderfulness--i just feel horrible about not giving credit to the right people! so...if you're my sp (either one), please feel free to clarify and accept my apologies and gratitude!!

i dreamt this morning of the scar left in the hill by this plane crash. it was of a scale such that i could reach out and stroke the apex of it, still charred and etched in the earth. in so doing, i unearthed, barely buried, a penny, face up, accidentally flipping it over. i hastened to turn it back to face-side-up, not wanting anyone to be unlucky due to my clumsiness.
i dream of plane crashes a lot, or of the actual crashes or the terrifying rolls and pitches or explosions just prior. though i haven't had one in a while, though--maybe a few months. no idea why this one came to me. if you knew someone on this chicago-to-pittsburgh flight, or on any other, i'm so sorry. a la the yarn harlot's yoo-hoo for lee ann, i hope my living horrific moments in my nightmares for other people will help lessen the moments that other people do so. (other vivid nightmares i have--and they're always nightmares--include being part of a nazi concentration camp roundup.) (i wish i really thought those dreams were helping anyone. wouldn't that be nice.)

Sunday, 16 July 2006

i haven't dropped off the face of the earth, honestly. smartboy and i finally decided yesterday to stay in this house and remodel it instead of moving to another house, giving notice to our tenants that we wanted to take it over by december 31. yikes!